Logos used on Facebook by people in Thailand have reflected the different political viewpoints since red shirt protesters began their rallies in Bangkok, and these became more noticeable after the April 10 clashes, a blogger and independent scholar has said.
Sarinee Achavanuntakul, who is also owner of Fringer.com, said during a roundtable forum on the media's role in the political crisis hosted by Nation Multimedia Group on Friday that recently many people began using logos for their profile picture on Facebook to show their attitude toward the political crisis. These logos mostly signified people's views on the domestic turmoil.
The use of these diverse logos could be separated into two periods - before the April 10 clashes in which 27 people were killed and over 800 injured, and after April 10. There were four subdivisions in each period, she noted.
Sarinee explained that before April 10, the first group had anti-red-shirt logos, and could be distinguished as hard-core with some harsh words and strong attitude, such as "Want to exchange? Dissolve the Parliament and Thaksin goes to jail". But "softer" logos used proper language such as "We support our Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva."
The second group was people who supported the Red Shirts. This group was divided into "hard-core" and softer people as well. Most hardcore logos had ironic humour such as "Love Thailand Ban Violence" with a red colour in the middle of a flower, which was sarcastic, as a flower with a Thai flag in the middle represents non-violence. "Softer logos pointed to the idea of dissolving Parliament.
The third group was anti-violence with logos seeking peace in society saying "Stop ruining Thailand", "Stop creating violence", etc.
The last group of logos before the April 10 clash was a miscellaneous assortment. Their phrases neither supported or opposed the red shirts, but said things such as "We don't care, we are irritated."
After the April 10 clashes, many amusing but sarcastic logos were created and replaced anti-violence logos. Other groups of logos still remained.
The amusing but sarcastic logos displayed phrases such as "Bring my Siam Paragon back by the expensive-shirt group" or "Bring my Kinokuniya back by expensive book readers group".
Hardcore anti-red-shirt people began to use logos dedicated to honour heroic soldiers, while the softer group had logos maintaining support for the PM.
Meanwhile, red-shirt supporters began using a logo that blamed the media for provoking strife. The "No Strawberry Media" logo condemned some news outlets for delivering untrue information, provoking violence and being propaganda for one side.